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Microsoft Purview Audit vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Purview Audit
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (45th)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Audit is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is 0.7%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Nagendra Nekkala - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to create a user in the cloud and give them access to resources through a single workflow
The PAM for Active Directory is good. ActiveOps is quite useful as a feature. The One Identity active role enables us to create a user in the cloud and give them access to resources through a single workflow. We can create rules-based access. It helps us control audit management and IT access management. We can decide what people can access and detect job functions. It enables zero trust security with hybrid AD, find delegation, and role-based access control. It provides all certificates and provides secure authentication, call-based access control, et cetera. It's really important for my critical applications. We can see who's using what, whether they are authorized, and other information to decide what access to offer. With the active role console, I can find out the obvious issues and also perform a decent setup. The One Identity active roles enable us to reduce password reset times. We can handle tasks in a matter of a minute. It simplifies AD and Azure AD management, efficiency, and security overall. The password manager is very secure and is a self-service password manager solution. It is considerably decreasing my help desk tasks. Our engineering users can reset forgotten passwords, and it can implement a stronger password. The management around access to enterprise resources keeps my data and systems secure. We're easily saving at least one hour per day using this solution. The migration from AD to Azure AD is very easy. There are simple configurations, and the migration goes rather smoothly. We use the solution support for SaaS apps through Cloud Delivered SCIM connectors. There are controls that can be configured and we can add and set permissions easily.
Frank Radeck - PeerSpot reviewer
Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented the solution now take just 30 minutes.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms. It is critical for Purview to be able to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. From a support perspective, I can do things while I'm eating lunch or something else. It's more dynamic and responsive. I think everybody appreciates it. We're not tied to one device. Purview's multi-cloud capabilities are also essential for the same reasons. Keeping everything under one umbrella further increases the time savings. Purview accounts for critical regulations from around the world. This is crucial because we hold ourselves accountable to standards and need to align with them. Working at a law firm, we have clients who dictate to us what standards they expect. The visibility is excellent. As we move more things into the cloud, more opportunities exist to put everything under one umbrella.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The platform has significantly enhanced our operational insight into the overall Microsoft 365 environment."
"We're easily saving at least one hour per day using this solution."
"Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented Purview now take just 30 minutes."
"The most valuable features are automatic content logging tagging. Performing these tasks manually would be impossible. Since most of our data is already in Microsoft, it's convenient to run it through this tool."
"Our legal team benefits from using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms."
"The ability to query everything that's in Microsoft and send links or add people, like managers, to review the documents is valuable. It's easy as I don't have to download and email anything. I just add them as a reviewer, and they can access it from there."
"The return on investment is saving the equivalent of one or two full-time IT department employees and a few hours per week for legal staff."
"Purview eDiscovery has made it significantly easier to handle rare litigation requests."
"The machine learning wasn't half bad. I really like that part. I thought it was novel. It pretty much automated it, once you trained the model."
 

Cons

"Areas for product improvement include enhancing customization options and integrating more comprehensive compliance features."
"We do have a Denial of Access happening."
"I would suggest adding more platforms."
"I would suggest adding more platforms. Currently, it's compatible with OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange. Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial. Exploring options like Azure Files might be an avenue for improvement."
"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users."
"The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be beneficial. Copilot is expected to add such functionality in the future."
"The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially."
"Purview Data Loss Protection for remediating policy violations needs refinement, for example, in defining what constitutes a credit card because that is where I get the most false positives."
"We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders. It would be beneficial to have more options available for E3 customers. Enhanced Teams functionalities and better capture of text message data, both SMS and MMS, would also be improvements."
"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users. We still need all the backend stuff. We have to use Graph API to interface with everything and create custom interfaces on the front end to make it easier for the end users, which is costly. The reporting, sorting, and filtering capabilities that other products have aren't available natively in Purview."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently. While the licensing for Purview is not as tricky as other Microsoft products, navigating licenses since the shift to E3 and E5 plans has been a task, as individual licenses must now be purchased separately."
"The costs associated with E5 licensing are currently expensive for us, so we use the E3 license, which comes with fewer features and functionalities."
"With the full bundle, pricing is not a significant concern. As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile."
"In the positions that I've had through contracting over the years, I've heard talk of it being overpriced and underperforming compared to its competitors."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comes as part of Microsoft 365 licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Audit?
Areas for product improvement include enhancing customization options and integrating more comprehensive compliance features.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Audit?
We utilize Microsoft Purview Audit for monitoring security and compliance aspects.
What do you like most about Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The tool has been beneficial. Some of our previous users left the organization without sharing the information they had at a personal level. This information was related to the organization, and th...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The setup process was very straightforward. We acquired pricing through our reseller in NASDAQ, eliminating the need to search for prices ourselves.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be benefici...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Purview Audit vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.